How To Find And Convert Qualified Leads For Your Fitness Program Using Facebook Ads

Mar 02 2019|4min read

INTRODUCTION

The next 4-6 minutes will give you an actionable step by step process to find qualified leads for your fitness program.

DISCLAIMER

We are not guaranteeing that the following strategy will result in any sales or that your ads will get approved by Facebook. It’s important to do your own research and become familiar with Facebook’s Ad Policies before attempting to invest any money into the platform.

LINGO KEY

In this article I’ll be using some lingo that you might or might not be familiar with, in most cases, it’s explained along the way, but in-case you lose track, you can always come back here to this key:

ROAS = Return On Ad Spend (The Total $ Made From Your Ads)

TOF = Top Of Funnel (‘Cold’ audiences of people that have never been aware of your brand)

MOF = Middle Of Funnel (‘Warm’ audiences that have some level of awareness with your brand but haven’t made any purchases

BOF = Bottom Of Funnel (‘Hot’ audiences mixed with people that have both purchased a few products and veteran superfans)

LLA = Lookalike Audiences (Audiences created by Facebook from a source you provided which is intended to find Facebook users similar to those in the data source)

COPY = As Written (The text that’s in your ads, on your website, etc. designed to compel specific actions such as entering their information)

CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVE

The trick here is to consider what end of your funnel (TOF, MOF, BOF) you’re targeting and how much data you have behind that event. I.e. If you choose the ‘Conversions’ objective and want Purchases to happen, it’s only going to be effective if your Facebook Pixel has recorded a history of that ‘Purchase Event’ actually happening.

Take note that while you choose the objective on the Campaign Level, you can choose the ‘Event Optimization’ on the Ad Set Level. This means that if you don’t have enough data for Facebook to know the type of people that most commonly purchase, but you still want conversions, you can start off with a Conversion Campaign with Landing Page Views Optimization in your Ad Sets until you produce enough Purchase Event data.

Now that we’ve briefly covered what an objective means we can move on…

For the purpose of this training we’re going to only cover the ‘Lead Generation’ campaign objective. This means that the buttons on the ads will pop-up a native (hosted inside Facebook, not sent to a separate URL) form that users can fill out to get whatever you’re offering them.

The lead forms in Facebook auto-populate with the data they have on that user, i.e. if the form wants name, email and phone number, it will auto-populate with those fields that are associated with the users Facebook profile. This is great because it saves time and makes it very hassle-free for the user to complete the form, on the flip side, it’s terrible because most of the information people have connected to their Facebook accounts is very outdated. We’ll dive into this in a few minutes and give you some actionable steps that you can take to make sure the leads coming through your ads are high quality.

CUSTOMER PERSONAS

If you’ve been into marketing for some time, hey, I get it… you’ve probably heard of the whole “you must define your customer avatar” spuel plenty of times… the difference here is that you can actually use this information to target people on Facebook.

So first and foremost, here’s a list of questions you can ask yourself about your customer persona that will help you collect data that can be used within Facebook to actually target them.

If you’d like to practice, read this while using the customer persona of ‘Men aged 18-30’ and your example product being an ‘online instructional boxing program’.

What type of hobbies do they have?

What type of online tools & software do they use?

What specific influencers do they follow?

What conferences or events are they interested in and/or go to?

What suppliers, brands or vendors are they be interested in?

Where do they live or spend their time?

*If you’re wanting to practice, don’t continue reading until you’ve answered all of those questions, do a bit of research if you have it.

Now let’s cover these…

Obviously, more can be done here, a lot more in-fact. This is just to get your brain flowing a bit. Most of these won’t match anything in the interest, behavior & demographic part of an Ad Set, but, if you’ve got a creative mind you can do wonders with a list like this, layering down and stacking interests to get a large, but defined audience.

If you’re wondering what you can do with conferences… it’s an out of the box approach where you geo-target a specific building and exclude the surroundings during the time of an event, conference, etc. to only market to the people present at that event.

WRITING YOUR ADS

We’re not going to go super in depth into the actual copy framework here, as we have other posts on that topic and could easily X5 the size of this article. But, we will explain how considering where your audience is at psychologically will give you a major edge above your competitors.

If you plan to scale your business using Facebook Ads, you should ideally be forming a ‘funnel’ that present specific offers to specific audiences at different times.

To put this into perspective, if someone has never seen your content or brand before, it’s wiser to avoid any offers, for this TOF audience, you’ll want to write copy that will focus on peeking engagement and providing value.

Now if they have engaged a bit, i.e. watched a video or commented on a Facebook post, you can move them into your BOF campaigns. Here is where you should be presenting simple offers such as:

Get My Top 6 Workouts For Building Your Glutes (Downloadable PDF)

Get A Free Online Consultation With Me For A Whole Hour

Essentially, it’s offers that people who are still on the edge about you can take without pushing outside their comfort zone – for people who aren’t ready to buy.

Once they’ve converted one of your ‘tripwires’ or ‘lead magnets’ (i.e. a downloadable PDF) you can move them into the bottom of your funnel. This is where you’ll be coming in with the big ASKS, your core offers.

People who have made the decision to trust you with their email or phone number are the people that are most likely to buy from you. It’s similar to the dating process with relationships… you need to take them out to dinner or coffee first.

CONVERTING LEADS INTO CLIENTS

Now you’ve written ads that are actually converting… you’re gaining leads… now it’s time to cover some tricks and tips to get those leads to convert into paying customers.

One of the most under-utilized conversion tricks that advertisers completely abandon and don’t even consider is what I like to call ‘post opt-in pre-framing’.

In this case, with a lead form, after a user submits their information they are then shown a ‘thank you’ screen. Most people just say something along the lines of “Thank you, we received your information, check your email…” All I have to say to that is…

This is the PEAK time your lead is interested, it’s the equivalent of them walking up to your storefront business, signing a paper and you handing them a flyer and saying “Great, I’ll shoot you a text later to show you some stuff” before they even have a chance to walk into the door or ask you any questions.

Here’s an example of the style I go for with my lead form ‘thank you’ screens…

As you can tell, we didn’t push an excited person away, we simply gave them another call to action that benefits them while keeping the conversation light.

So, let’s say that your offer is a 20% off coupon for a small personal training package that starts with a consultation…

Rather than just emailing them a coupon , instead you can carry their excitement further and use the opportunity to educate them and build more rapport. In this case, you could have a short 27 second video of you saying something along the lines of…

“Hey, thanks a ton for your interest in my program and coming through to this video, I wanted to take a second to explain what you can expect. So I’ve got an insanely busy schedule, but I’ll give you a call from this number (number appears on the screen) as soon as I have an open slot for your consultation. But in the meantime, I’d like to show you a video of what the consultation actually is… most people have some prejudgement that I’m going to weigh and measure them, etc. but it’s really not like that at all… so I have this real video that’s about 4 minutes showing different parts of the consultation I had with a new client a few weeks back. Feel free to tap the button below this video to go watch that now. Oh and when I call, it’ll actually be me calling you, not a robot, so please don’t leave me hanging! Cheers, Cole!”

See how powerful that can be?

Now a lot of people won’t go watch both (or even the first) videos, that’s OK… but what this does is allow people who want to engage with longer, the ability to do so.

In such a small addition to our processes we accomplished a few powerful things here:

They can put a face to the name (if they haven’t already)

They can visually see the number on the first video so they are less likely to reject it when the call comes in

They experience scarcity and the desire to not let someone down by not answering the call which builds more value and a higher likelihood it’s answered

They were able to watch another video seeing exactly the process they will go through with the consultation (the video should be focused on eliminating objections)

This is just one example of dozens of different funnels and processes we use for our clients. If you’re not feeling this style, do not let it limit you from trying your own version of it. The power here comes from taking things a step further and building trust with that new lead.

LOW HANGING FRUIT

Immediately after submitting the lead form, we have a Zap (Zapier) set up to notify our clients that the new lead has come through and they need to call within the next 6-12 minutes… giving enough time for the person to watch the videos and not waiting enough time for excitement to die down.

Rather than calling and saying “Hey {name}, I saw your information come through, would you like to book that consultation now?” you simply give them two options… i.e. “Hey {name}, I saw your information come through and wanted to give you a quick call between training sessions because I’ve got 2PM tomorrow and a 9AM the next day available, which one works best for you?”

Use a few emojis in your copy (not too many) as it can help build context and make your ads stand out. If you use them correctly with the context, you’ll help add more personality to your stories and carry the user along the right emotions throughout your copy.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The key here is developing your ability to pre-frame people… it’s all about building know, like, trust, etc. If you want people to buy from you, you have to clear the path… wipe all objections off the table by educating them and building a virtual relationship. If you treat people like humans and show your genuine, authentic side, you’ll stand out from your competition and convert more clients/customers into your fitness program.

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